If you care too much about what you have to say, if your heart is too much in it, you can be pretty sure of making a mess. `{`...`}` and you get nothing out it but apathy in your audience and disappointment and misery in yourself.

Thomas Mann

Statistics showed that in 2014 users were posting over 1.8 billion photos every day on social media. Thomas Mann could not possibly begin to imagine that people could care so much as to produce an equally staggering number of accompanying comments, likes and shares. And if nothing comes to anything, as Boris Yellnikoff says, it is remarkably ironic how there’s no shortage of idiots to babble. Little can we do if the modern background noise to life is this constant bla bla bla: in Paolo Sorrentino’s ‘The Great Beauty’, ‘a cover to the embarrassment of being in the world’.

The above seems to corroborate Sturgeon’s Law, that 90% of the information we receive is crud. As a result, setting out what is worthy of one’s attention becomes a crucial exercise for the modern individual. And it is equally crucial to our mission that the material we publish on this website will make it through Sturgeon’s sieve. Just like we used the initials of our names, Marco and Tommaso, for the name of our venture, we hope that you will find bits of us in what you see and read on Meaningful Travels.

Not long ago, I found a short essay I wrote at the age of 17, in which I argued that traveling is a metaphor of living. Looking back to that piece of writing, ten years later, having lived, walked, motorcycled, sailed to a good number of countries, I find it frighteningly premonitory. The same feeling of wonderment and curiosity Plato indicates as the origin of philosophy and science in the Theatetus is at the core of our passion for discovery at Meaningful Travels, and the core of our own philosophy can be phrased as follows.

Traveling is a metaphor of living. Living is a journey of discovery. For many, discovery is an outward as much as an inward process. And in this two-way process of discovery we shall become more conscious of what is worthy of our limited time and energies, which we can chose to invest into what helps us best to bestow some meaning onto our journey. And with meaning often comes responsibility. So we live, we travel, we discover and we testify; we document what seems important to the best of our abilities, and we speak out when necessary. We hope this will inspire you to investigate your own motives in life and to make the most of your journey. Fare well!